First Plone Bootcamp a Success

The Triangle ZPUG hosted a wildly-successful Plone Bootcamp from Jan 3 to Jan 7.

The Triangle Zope/Python Users Group in North Carolina hosted a Plone Bootcamp. This camp featured 40 students getting an intense, one-week development training on Plone, followed by a sprint to try out their new skills.

The bootcamp was taught by Joel Burton, a Plone trainer, developer, and community member, and was based on Joel's commercial Plone training. The material covered using, configuring, and developing for Plone and Zope, including skills like building content types, debugging the system, and best practices for development.

Following the bootcamp, there was a sprint, hosted by (on-site) Plone developer Geoff Davis and (remotely) Plone co-founder Alexander Limi. The sprint gave the students a chance to test their new skills by fixing bugs and enhancing PloneHelpCenter, the product used for documentation on plone.org and other sites.

The bootcamp was organized by Chris Calloway of TriZPUG, and sponsored by several university programs and nearby businesses. Given the generosity of the sponsors, students were able to receive a full week of Plone training for only $150. Chris will be writing a HowTo for plone.org on organizing a bootcamp for community groups.

Information on the bootcamp and sprint, including photos and the syllabus, are at http://trizpug.org/boot-camp.